Diggin' in the Dirt

Well it wouldn't be May without a post about the garden, now would it?  I'll leave Ben (ahem ahem) to blog about all the particulars of what's been planted and how lovely it's all doing, but suffice it to say, May is all about gardening in the Stockwell house.  These gardeners are funny creatures - sometime around September or October every year, I hear recurring promises to scale back, go smaller, spend less time in the garden...and it's not just Ben - I hear this from the many beloved gardeners in my life.  Then there is the long cold winter, and these gardeners start to dream...and to plan...and to collect piles and piles of seed catalogs...and before you know it, it's April and your garden is twice the size you last remembered it!  All kidding aside, I truly love the role gardening plays in our family life.  I love that both Ethan and Adam now have their very own gardens, where they can choose what they want to grow (sort of - Adam's insistence upon growing corn and only corn has been redirected), plant it, take care of it (again, sort of, with lots of help from Dad), pick it, and proudly share it with the rest of the family.  I love that starting now, I can walk out to my garden at lunchtime every day and grab a handful of lettuce for a salad or a sandwich, and that in a couple of months, we'll be relying on our garden for almost all our vegetable needs.  I love that our kids love veggies, and that some of that has to come from having witnessed the magical beauty of a plant just beginning to sprout from the earth, and having tasted a sun-warmed tomato or a crisper-than-crisp snap pea, straight off the vine.  I love that the other morning, before he'd even had breakfast, Ethan wanted to go check on his garden to see how much his plants had grown overnight.  And that Adam was only a few steps behind him.  And I love that gardening is something we can all do together.

Now about that expansion...Ben's been busy this spring replacing old beds and building new ones, including this pretty stone garden on the hill.

He and the boys also spent the weekend I was away with my mom on garden expansion detail.  I was quite impressed with the two new raised beds that awaited me when I returned!

And because I've seen how passionate my kids are about gardening, I decided this spring to co-chair a committee focused on constructing a new school garden at Ethan's school.  Back in April, we held a community work day, with a great turnout, amazing weather, and three new raised beds, built, painted, filled, and ready to be planted.

And in case Ethan just wasn't getting enough with all this gardening fun at home, he spent his April vacation just down the road at Broadturn Farm.  In addition to some time in the greenhouse, Ethan collected eggs, fed the baby cow, built many, many fairy houses, fell in the brook, played in a maze made of stacked wood, made yogurt, and generally enjoyed being a mini-farmer for a week.  Adam's there now on Thursday mornings for a preschool version of the camp, and is similarly loving getting his hands (and feet and face) dirty.

 

 

 

So now we wait.  We welcome these rainy days and hope for some sun soon and check our plants often and nibble at the lettuce and plant some more.  It's all so much fun (says the one who does the least amount of work in the garden and reaps the most significant benefits - thanks honey).  

Our compost delivery arrived at dinnertime one night.  And just like that, I was eating alone and there were three men wielding shovels in my yard.

Fun on a Sunday morning: a trip to the livestock supply place for straw.
We Stockwells sure do know how to have a good time.